


Sometimes Always

by Navigatrix



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Charles Vane Lives (Black Sails), During Canon, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon Fix-It, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28645635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Navigatrix/pseuds/Navigatrix
Summary: In which Charles Vane survives hanging and must reckon with his past.
Relationships: Charles Vane & Original Character(s), Charles Vane/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 19





	1. Thieves Alley

Charles Vane once heard that a man can only truly possess that which he cannot lose in a shipwreck. For all the times he’s had to run with nothing but his life in his hands, and those times are many, this most recent is the hardest to bear.

The late autumn sleet beats against the drafty window of his rented room by the wharves. Nor'easters, he learned these storms are called, blowing in off the Atlantic, bringing traffic in the harbor to a standstill and turning the muddy streets into debris-strewn rivers.

Until recently, he spent his entire life in the heat of the West Indies. New York City is cold and unceasingly raw. Its damp chill seeps into his bones and makes old injuries ache damnably. Vane finds himself taking a liking to these storms anyway; they match his mood. 

Perhaps he should head to the tavern where he works instead of huddling by the small fire trying to ignore the past. The tavern owner is a freedman, known to give a hand to other former slaves. All Vane had to do was show the brand on his chest and scowl a little, and he was given a job as a bouncer. The irony of it: Charles Vane, notorious scourge of the seas, reduced to breaking up drunken brawls and preventing grown men from pissing on the floor under an assumed name. Still, he’s alive and free, right under the noses of the fucking English…

He’s felt eyes on him all evening. Yet whenever he turns, nothing. Just the usual goings-on of a bustling portside pub on a rainy night. At closing, he takes his pay and begins trudging back to the rooming house where he intends to numb himself with drink until it’s time to wake and do the same on the morrow.

He’s definitely being followed. He dislikes being followed. He turns to see that several of the tavern-goers are coming toward him, an assortment of weapons in hand. He dryly thinks that times must be hard indeed if they intend to rob him of his pay; split several ways it wouldn’t even be enough for a mug of ale each. A pistol goes off, grazing a leg just barely recovered from the last time he was shot, and Vane staggers. His attackers are nearly upon him when a slightly-built figure leaps between them. A low-pitched female voice, an oddly familiar voice, calls out something in what Vane recognizes as Dutch. There is laughter from the others, and they withdraw. 

The woman approaches, her hands empty, reaching down to assist him. He gets the impression of large eyes in an angular face, a dark coat wrapped tight against the mist. Is it? Can it be?

She looks at him as if seeing a ghost, albeit a ghost with whom she is slightly cross. Then she remembers herself. “Charles.” Her expression turns wry. “Did I hear them refer to you as ‘Mr. Thatch’ back there at the tavern?”

He checks her face for any sign of fury, and sees none. “I can’t very well go by my own name now, can I, Miss Teach.”

“It’s Mrs. Sullivan now. And no, I suppose you can’t. I’m sure my father wouldn’t mind you using one of his last names; you’re more his child than I ever was.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, without bitterness. 

He forces a levity to his voice that he does not feel. “So you married Sully? How is he, anyway?” At least she wedded a brave man and a kind one.

She shuts her eyes slowly, shakes her head, then reopens them. “He’s been dead three years. Took a bullet to the head in a raid.”

“Margaret, I’m…”

“Save the platitudes, Charles. They don’t suit you.” She looks tired, her eyes far away. “He was right beside me when it happened. He died free and he didn’t suffer.” 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. What can he possibly say to that. Memories of the three of them as teenagers, skylarking in the rigging of the Revenge. Vane was the strongest, Margaret was the fastest, and Sully, well, Sully was acrobatic and fearless. And Sully made her laugh, something she did far too seldom. Vane envied him that ability.

She turns her sharp gaze back to him. "If you’re wondering what I said to your new friends back there, I told them that while it is clear that the only thing you use your head for is growing hair, entering Thieves Alley alone as you did with a pocket full of coin, it would be cruel to deprive you of it."

In spite of himself, he huffs out a short laugh. She’s studying him, and he thinks she sees the question that he cannot bring himself to ask aloud. _I missed you._ _Did you miss me?_

“My last words to you were cruel.” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “I regret them. I’m glad I have the opportunity to tell you so.” _Why did I get you out of there if you’re going to go do her bidding, be her attack dog? She doesn’t love you, Charles, she’s incapable of loving anyone. And now you’re walking right back into another kind of slavery and it was all for nothing. If I never see you again, it will be too soon._ She jumped into one of the longboats and never once looked back at him as the men rowed it out to the ship. He wanted to call out to her to stay, that he changed his mind, but youthful stupid pride made the words stick in his throat. In the end he watched her climb the rope ladder to the _Revenge_ , watched her sail out of Nassau Harbor, watched her disappear over the horizon...

Vane holds her gaze because he’s certain that she would not welcome him holding her body. “Everything you said to me was true, though I couldn’t see that at the time. You had every reason to hate me.”

Margaret tilts her head to one side. “I never hated you, though I tried. Never even resented you, really.” She sighs. “I resented my father for wanting a son so badly that he all but ignored me once you arrived, and I resented the hell out of myself for trying so hard to win his approval.” She pauses. “You’re shivering.”

He starts to deny it but Margaret rolls her eyes at him. “Yes, I know, you’re tougher than the rain and wind and you’re made out of pain and hunger, but you’re not dressed for this climate. Let’s get you in front of a fire. I didn’t come to your aid yet again for you to catch consumption in fucking stinking Thieves Alley.” Vane knows better than to argue with her when she takes that tone.

  
He falls into step beside her and follows her through a series of alleyways, up some back stairs to a garret. It’s two rooms, sparse but clean, a fire burned down to embers in the small hearth. She drags two chairs and a small table closer to the fireplace and gestures for him to sit while she sets about stoking the fire. He finds himself admiring the quiet confidence with which she moves, the deft precision of her hands. That hasn’t changed. The wooden chair feels like heaven after a night on his feet, and the fire quickly warms the small room. He slouches back and stares into the flames while Margaret bustles around, hanging her coat on a peg, boiling the kettle. Unconsciously, the fingers of one hand worry at the scar on his neck left by the hangman’s noose. It’s slight, but it’s there. In most ways he’s recovered from his brief hempen jig. He can sometimes go hours without thinking of it, but there will always be reminders. Much, Vane muses, like his years sailing with Edward Teach and daughter.

_Everything hurt. The latest flogging from the taskmaster tore his back open from shoulder to waist, and he could barely stand. His whole body was wracked with fever. He heard a girl’s voice, and a man’s voice, both unfamiliar, distorted-sounding, and then he was being carried. He must have lost consciousness; when he came to, the whole world was swaying and he heard the creaking of boards, waves lapping against the...hull? Why was he on a ship? Had he been sold again? And then a girl about his own age was looking down at him with a grave expression, her hair in a braid and her big eyes curious. “Where am I?” he asked her. “You’re on the Revenge,“ she said, and, seeming to intuit his next question, she added “you’re free now. We’re all free here. We’re pirates.” There was pride in her voice and her posture at that last. He later learned he was free because Margaret Teach talked her father into taking him with them._

In the silence that has fallen between them, his stomach growls. He tries to ignore it, but she’s heard. She fetches bread and cheese from a box on the windowsill, a bottle of rum, and a pair of dented tin mugs into which she pours tea, putting it all on the table between them.

That’s what seemed off. She’s wearing a dress, and it’s all wrong. It flatters her well, but it’s all wrong. A proper pirate like her, dressed like a merchant’s wife. 

Margaret raises an eyebrow at the look on his face. “It isn't poisoned, Charles” she says dryly as she pours rum into her tea. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now. I wouldn’t waste good rum.” 

He takes the offered bottle and adds a heavy pour to his own tea, then takes a sip and lets it burn all the way down to his belly. “Thrown your lot in with civilization, have you?” 

“No.” Her knuckles whiten on the edge of the table and she scowls. “I fucking hate it here.” 

He reaches over and places a hand on hers, and is gratified when she doesn’t pull it away. “You’re like me, Magpie. We belong at sea.”

“We do.” Her voice is quiet, wistful. “Nobody’s called me that since Sully died.” 

_Sully grinned at the way Margaret's eyes tracked the doubloon that Vane set dancing back and forth across his knuckles. “You’re a magpie, that’s what you are.”_

“ _What’s a magpie?” she asked._

_“Very clever little bird, a bit like a crow. They’ll steal anything that catches their eye, especially if it’s shiny, and they’ll have a go at birds of prey many times their size. They live in England.”_

_Margaret curled her lip. “Fuck England.”_

_“Fuck England,” Sully agreed. “Rest of it suits you, though.”_

_Vane thought it was apt for the clever dark-haired pirate girl. His fierce little Magpie._

She turns her hand over in his and gives it a brief squeeze. “I don’t mind you calling me that.” They finish their meal in silence, but it almost feels like the silence of old times. As in old times, it’s easy to fall back into task organizing without needing to discuss it much; he clears up the remnants of their meal while she makes up a cot for him near the hearth.

He hadn’t expected her to invite him to her bed, not really; she never did in the past, and the disastrous choices he made when he was a young man likely destroyed any chance of that in the future. They’re no longer children with a habit of falling asleep in a pile among coils of rope like a litter of alley cats between their watches. But now, all these years later, they’re reunited. It will have to be enough.

From the other room, he hears a sob, quickly stifled. Vane knows Margaret doesn’t want him to know she’s crying, perhaps wants it less even than he wants her to cry, yet how can he ignore the pain she’s in? He tries her door, only to find she’s bolted it from within. He returns to his cot. Eventually sleep takes him, and by some mercy, he does not dream.

  
  



	2. Thick As Thieves

Vane wakes at dawn to find Margaret already up and about, though he’s not sure she’s slept at all. Her face looks drawn, and in the grey light the dark circles beneath her eyes nearly look as though she’s sporting a pair of shiners. She’s built up the fire and is sitting in front of it, her long fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. She glances over and pours him a mug, which he gulps down. It’s brewed strong and sweet.

He takes the chair across from her and rests his elbow on the table, leaning in to peer at her. “What the fuck are you doing here, Magpie?”

“Charles, are you turning into a philosopher?” 

There's a wall there, where there never was before. Not that he can blame her. “You said you fucking hate it here. You could go anywhere. Why do you stay?”

She relents with a heavy sigh. “I’m keeping a promise to my father.” Her voice is curt. He waits for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.

“You could have rejoined him, or gone back to Nassau.”

She stares at him as though she can’t believe how stupid he is, but there’s a wound behind her eyes. “No. I couldn’t.” She stands and paces to the window, which she stares out blankly. 

“But why here?”

“Because this is where the ship he put you on was headed.”

Vane remembers very little of what happened after he stepped off the cart. The jolt at the end of the rope. Gunshots and commotion. Falling and being caught. The wound in his leg had started to fester while he was gaoled, and he spent days drifting in and out of consciousness, feverish, his throat too sore from the noose to talk. At the edges of his vision, a dark figure whose face he couldn’t make out — he assumes he hallucinated that. At some point he learned he was on a schooner bound for New York City, and that it was part of Blackbeard’s fleet, one he sometimes used to move cargo without attracting attention.

“Why the fuck didn’t you let me know you were here?”

“Didn’t know what to say to you.” She shrugs. “I wasn’t sure whether the first thing I’d do would be hug you or knee you in the balls.”

“Yet you did neither.”

She narrows her eyes in a way he’s learned means _don’t press your luck._ “Get your shit from the rooming house. You can stay here while we figure out what the fuck to do next.” She said _we._

He returns from the rooming house, his few worldly possessions in an old sea bag slung over his shoulder, to find her gone. The shot of nerves is a gut-punch until he sees the note on the table: “Back in a bit -- M”

And indeed, a short time later, he hears three quick raps on the window pane, an old signal of theirs, and a gust of chill air blows through the garret as it opens. Her voice: “I’m coming in.” She swings herself inside, landing with a loose-limbed ease that’s familiar from so many raids together. Her eyes are the only visible part of her. Everything else is swathed in dark clothing, from the knit cap and scarf hiding her hair and face to the well-worn canvas jacket and trousers hiding her figure. 

He raises his eyebrows. “Has the door offended you in some way?” The woman has always known how to make an entrance.

She finishes unwrapping the scarf and pulls off her cap, releasing a weather system of dark hair. Margaret is in the clothes of a working pirate, hair wild and a spark of that old feral joy in her eyes, and the world begins to make sense again. He’s sure she’s got half a dozen knives concealed about her person, even if she’s carrying neither pistols nor cutlass.

She gives him a sly grin. “The Puritan couple downstairs is entirely too interested in saving my unworthy soul. I prefer to avoid them.”

“Mmhmm. You can’t have been rooftopping because you were someplace you shouldn’t have been and you didn’t want to be followed.”

She feigns indignation. “Who, me? An honest widow woman, pure in word, thought, and deed?”

He finds himself grinning back at her. “I appreciate the warning before you came through the window.”

“Well, I recall what happens when you’re startled.” _He’d been dozing lightly and he grabbed her arm and threw her, pinning her to the deck with a knife to her throat before he realized who she was. The surprise on her face, the clean strips of linen scattered everywhere. He felt like an utter shit; he’d taken a nasty cutlass slash and she’d only been coming to change his bandages. He couldn’t look her in the eye for days after that. Yet even at her most furious, she never threw it back at him…_

”I recall what happens when you’re startled too,” he smirks and quirks his scarred eyebrow melodramatically. He shouldn’t have snuck up on her when she had a marlinspike in her hand.

She smiles ruefully. “I apologized for that.”

“And I said not to worry; it came from a formidable opponent.”

The smile fades from her face. “I’m not your opponent, Charles.” Her voice is quiet, serious, thick with some emotion he can’t quite name. “I never was.”

“No,” he replies, equally quiet, equally serious, “But you are formidable.” How different life would be, if only he’d found the words. 

Blocks away, the church bell on Broadway peals out the time. He’s not sure if he’s disappointed or relieved that he has to head to work. The evening passes uneventfully. On his return, she’s already gone to bed.

He is pushing the earth from his body, but it keeps piling on top of him. He can’t dig fast enough, and the manacles rip at his wrists, and a crowd is jeering and he can’t breathe…

Vane hits the rough wooden planks of the floor with a ragged shout. And then she’s at his side, her arms lifting him into a sitting position. They’re a sailor’s arms, sinewy and strong from years of hauling on lines and climbing aloft. Her hand, callused but gentle, pushing his hair from his eyes. Then she simply sits on the floor beside him and threads her fingers through his.

_Despite being the Captain’s daughter, Margaret received no special treatment; Charles’s hammock was strung next to hers in the fo'c'sle. He’d flipped himself right out of it, hitting the floor with enough of a thud to wake her. She crouched beside him, an arm around his shoulders, reminding him where he was. “Next time, reach out for my hand,” she ordered. And so the next time a nightmare jolted him awake, he did. Many a night she held his hand in the dark as the ship creaked and swayed around them. None of the crew ever said a word to him about his nightmares, and that, he learned from Sully, was because she used what small influence she had to see to it that they wouldn’t._

“Was it the giant?” She remembers what he said the only time he told her -- told anyone -- what he saw in his nightmares. Of course she does.

“I killed him. I went back to that,” his voice breaks slightly, “place, and I killed him.”

In the dark, her hair brushes his shoulder as she turns her head to look at him. “Does it help, knowing he can never hurt you again?”

“Sometimes. But the fear never fully goes away.” He’s never told anyone else any of this. He’s not sure why he’s telling her, except that she held his hand in the dark. “I fought him first, and he knocked me unconscious. Buried me alive. Had to dig myself out.” Her hand tightens around his, a reminder that he is still alive, still free. He coughs out a broken approximation of a laugh. “Should’ve made sure I was dead before he put me in the fucking ground.”

“And so now you sometimes dream of that.” She pauses and gives him a measuring look. “And the jolt at the end of a rope?”

He nods. He should have expected that she’d guess right.

She frowns for a moment and stares into the middle distance. Then her face softens. ”Giant slayer.”

He leans his shoulder against hers. When he told her about his nightmares, she couldn’t believe he didn’t know the story of Jack the Giant-Slayer. He remembers another night, windy like this one, huddled together on another floor as she told him that tale by the light of a lantern. He can pinpoint it now, the moment when he started believing it was possible to slay a giant himself. Started believing it until a different girl convinced him that he could never. 

He shifts so that their linked hands cover his racing heart. “Magpie.”

Her chest rises and falls inside the men’s shirt she’s wearing and she starts to lean closer. Then she stands abruptly, releasing his hand. “I’ll boil the kettle.”

They sip their drinks in silence. It’s not uncomfortable, not exactly, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been so bold. He shouldn’t have expected her to return any of his feelings, not after such a betrayal and so many years apart. He realizes his fingers have gone to the rope scar on the side of his neck, and that she’s watching.

“Does it give you pain?” There’s genuine concern on her face. Perhaps she still cares for him after all. From the moment he woke up on the _Revenge_ , he and Margaret had been thick as thieves, which after all, as Margaret had sensibly pointed out, they were.

“Not usually.” He takes a long pull on his coffee. “Can’t say it improved my voice any.”

She catches his attempt at lightening the mood. “Regardless, you’ve turned into quite the orator.” She stands to open the shutters; by now the sky is lightening in the pre-dawn hush. 

“I wasn’t aware I gave any speeches these past two days.”

“I meant your speech at the gallows. It was a bit of a distraction while I was trying to calculate windage and bullet drop.”

Vane snaps his head up to stare at her in shock. “ _You_ shot the rope?” She always was a good shot. Deadeye Magpie, picking off foes from the fighting tops.

She deadpans “I’ll admit that I fully understand the urge to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I would allow anyone else the satisfaction.” 

He snorts, but feels something long buried within him melt. She’d gone back to Nassau, rescued him once more, at no small risk to herself. Why? 

The momentary playfulness leaves her face at the question on his. “Is it truly so hard for you to believe? I took a musket ball for you once.” 

That musket ball nearly killed her. Those weeks while Margaret was ashore recovering, she bloomed the way that young women sometimes do. Nearly overnight, it seemed, she’d gone from being a gawky, coltish little thing with the face of a cranky hawk to an aquiline beauty, graceful and utterly poised. His breath caught when he spied her on the jetty, her dark hair blowing loose in the wind and her eyes shining as she watched the _Revenge_ crew come ashore with their latest prize. That hair has threads of silver in it now, but her body is every bit as lithe as he remembers, her face every bit as lovely. And if her eyes are sadder now, harder than they were all those years ago, they’re no less captivating.

He rises and closes the distance between them in three strides and takes her hands in his. “I can’t make it right,” he says quietly to her guarded, upturned face. “This I know. You gave me my freedom and your friendship, many times over, and in return I hurt you.”

She doesn’t pull away. “Did you know that Eleanor tried it on with Sully first? He saw right through her. Told her to fuck off.”

It stings, but he can’t say he’s surprised. They both tried to warn him and he lashed out at them, refused to listen. Told Margaret that she was spoiled and selfish, that she just wanted him at her beck and call...oh, the absolute fucking irony of that. “I’d take it back if I could. What I said. What I did.” Vane is not a man used to apologizing, but for her, he’s willing.

She slips one hand out of his and places it lightly on the cheekbone that Eleanor had battered with her fists. “Sully never bore you any ill will. None of us did. He didn’t understand why you threw away everyone and everything for her. I didn’t then either, but I think perhaps I do now.” She drops her hand back to her side and starts to turn away. “I’ve got to go see some people about a boat.” Reluctantly, he releases her other hand. Watches her put on her coat and boots. Watches her walk away, again. This time, at least, they don’t part in anger. 


	3. Thieves Like Us

The two fighters circle each other in their makeshift ring on the docks, stripped to the waist despite the chill night air. In the smoky torchlight, the scene could almost be a pirate camp. Margaret has woven her way to the front of the gathered crowd of bettors. She’s put coin on Vane, partly out of loyalty, partly because she remembers what a magnificent brawler he was. The other fighter is the clear local favorite; unlike Vane, he’s well-known in the area. He’s half a head taller than Vane and outweighs him as well, and he’s fast and strong, but Vane fights with a savage intensity, feral glee in his eyes at the challenge and the rush of it. And his technique and tactics are far better. Vane dodges the lighting-fast combination of punches thrown at him, getting in close to land blows of his own. It isn’t long before Vane’s ferocious onslaught has the other fighter down for the count. Yes, Vane is still magnificent, standing victorious in the center of the ring, sweat gleaming on his broad chest, long hair barely mussed, breath steaming in the cold. His piercing blue stare meets hers, and Margaret feels her pulse quicken. How does the bloody man manage to swagger while standing still? 

Beside her, the merchant who’d been trying to chat her up during the fight notices the heavy look she and Vane are exchanging. He mumbles an excuse about how he “didn’t realize you were here to watch your man”, and hurries away as Vane approaches. 

_My man,_ Margaret thinks sourly. No, her man had brown eyes and a broad, easy grin. Her man never let anyone or anything come between them. Her man is at the bottom of the sea. 

After Sully died, would-be suitors circled her like sharks. Most simply wanted an in with her father. Some were other pirates. Some were so-called respectable men, with their soft hands and their willingness to let others do their dirty work. She chased them all off with sharp words, and on at least one occasion, at the point of a pistol. 

“Your friend didn’t want to meet me?” Vane’s raspy growl brings her back to the present.

“Alas, he wasn’t the sociable type.”

“Pity.” Vane’s right arm tremors ever so slightly as he puts on his shirt, and Margaret finds herself grateful that he’s left-handed. She assists him into his coat, briskly, before he can object. Back in Nassau, it took her too long to get a clear shot as Vane’s face turned purple and his body convulsed at the end of the rope. She prays to a god she is not entirely sure she believes in, for reasons she is entirely unwilling to name, that the delay didn’t cause him permanent injury.

They collect their respective winnings and make their way to a nearby tavern, less rowdy than some and known for its food and its anonymity. Margaret forces herself not to react when her leg brushes against his under the table.

“Do you think it’s wise, drawing attention to yourself like you did prize-fighting?”

“Hiding in plain sight.” The corner of Vane’s mouth quirks upward. “And you wagered on me.”

Margaret gives him an extravagant shrug. “Of course I did. I’m a chancer.”

“Ever the proper pirate.” There is nothing mocking in his tone or his face.

“These past couple of years, smuggling is where most of the work has been.”

“You mean after Sully…”

She cuts him off. “Yes.” She wants to snarl at him to keep Sully’s name out of his mouth, but there was a time when Vane and Sully called each other brother and meant it. She can’t begrudge him any grief he might be feeling, nor curiosity.

He raises his mug of ale to hers. “To Sully. And to thieves like us.” They both drink deep.

Their food arrives. Vane examines the bread that came with their oyster stew. “They’ve picked off all the weevils.”

Margaret smiles slightly, in spite of herself. “I’ll fetch you some, if you like.” An old joke. It’s all too easy to fall into old jokes. _Margaret had extra duty once again for mouthing off at her father, and she was missing her meal because of it. She sat on the fighting top watching for sails, too proud to admit hunger or apologize, and Charles climbed up to bring her water ration, some dried meat, and some hard tack, though he’d have gotten in trouble himself if the captain caught him. She picked up a piece of the hard tack and examined it. “You picked off all the weevils.”_

_He gave her a cheeky grin. “I’ll fetch you some, if you like.” She started to laugh, but forced herself to be silent lest the sound draw attention to them, to the fact that he’d bent the rules for her. That bastard of a quartermaster, Israel Hands, already had it out for the both of them. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him to have another go at Charles.  
_

She tells herself there’s no harm in reminiscing about the boy he was, with his rough voice and his rough demeanor and his tender heart that he tried so hard to hide.

That rough voice is quiet, even confessional. “All my life, there were consequences for wanting things. The taskmasters would take anything they thought we wanted, just to show us that they could. The bigger slaves would take from the smaller, and I was the youngest and smallest of all. So I learned it was safer not to tell, not to show, if I was to have any chance of keeping anything I wanted.” Vane almost sounds as though he’s thinking aloud, but he’s watching her face intently as though willing her to understand something he can’t quite bring himself to say. “Then _she_ did more of the same, taking away anything she even thought I might want, just to prove she could.” There is no doubt as to who _she_ is. Is Vane expressing regret? Trying to explain? 

“There are also consequences for not asking for what you want.” She meant to sound arch, but it comes out harsh.

He looks down for a moment then fixes Margaret with a grave stare from beneath his brow. “So I’ve learned.” 

The silence hangs thick as a fog bank. Margaret focuses on finishing her meal; it’s easier than focusing on the man across from her.

_“I’m sailing for Nassau. Come with me.”_

_Margaret looked askance at her father. “Why would you ever want to return to that shithole? It’s nothing but backstabbers and cowards.”_

_“To get Charles out of there. They put a price on his head” he replied._

_“He made his choices. He can live with them. Or die with them.” Margaret wanted to sound cold, wanted to be cold, but the ice in her voice sounded unconvincing, even to her ears. Why should the very thought of Charles still have the power to wound her like this, a decade later? What had ever been between them other than a few kisses, some confidences shared?_

_“I could use your skills, Margaret.”_

_“Yes, you could. But you’ll have to do without.”_

_He looks up from the brace of pistols he’s loading. “You think admitting you still care for him would be disloyal to Sully.” When she didn’t answer he continued. “Margaret, when your mother died I was ill-equipped to raise a daughter. You were so young and so angry, and her loss annihilated us both. All those wives, I was trying to replace what couldn’t be replaced. What I had with her.”_

_“All those wives were because you wanted a son.” This time he didn’t respond. “I’m glad you don’t further insult me by denying it,” she said grimly._

_His nostrils flared but his voice stayed calm. Overly calm.“I loved your mother. I still love your mother. I’ve loved some of my other wives, each in different ways.”_

_“Why are you telling me this?”_

_“Because it’s possible for you to still love Sully and for that to be irreplaceable, and for you to love Charles as well.” He paused. “I must say I was surprised you didn’t choose him back then.”_

_“It wasn’t up to me,” she snapped. Damnation, he got her to admit it. If Charles had asked her to be with him, she would have said yes, without hesitation and without regret. But he didn’t, and Sully did. It was a good marriage, a happy one, right until the moment his brain ran out on the deck beside her._

_“Will you be here when I return?”_

_“I’ll be here. But I don’t want to see him.” She turned to leave._

_From behind her, her father's voice is uncharacteristically soft. “I wish you’d reconsider, for your own sake.” She left. The notorious Blackbeard, suddenly worried about her loneliness? This must be what going mad feels like._

“And people say I’m terse.” Vane’s teasing purr interrupts her thoughts. He’s trying to lift the pall that’s fallen between them.

Margaret risks a glance at his face. “I’ve been alone for a few years now. I’ve grown accustomed to it.” She drains the rest of her ale and slaps the mug down on the table.

“Surely you’ve no shortage of contenders.” His voice is still as light as the gravel in it allows, but his eyes remain serious.

“Perhaps.” A few days ago, she’d have said not a chance. Damn him. She sees him grit his teeth, the muscle flexing in his jaw. She stands. “There’s something I want to show you.”

He puts coins on the table and follows her. Outside, the clouds hang low and there is a sharp bite in the air. Snow is on the way.

She leads him to the back of the town, where the docks are even rougher and the respectable trades do well to avoid. To call the place a shipyard would be to flatter it, but it’s a yard and series of wharves where vessels of various types and in various states of repair are moored. She takes him to a sleek eight-gun sloop, built for speed and maneuverability, sitting in what might generously be termed dry dock. Recognition dawns on his face. “I haven’t seen a sloop like her since the last time I was on Ocracoke. Is that --”

Margaret completes his sentence. “The _Adventure,_ yes _._ The old girl took a beating, but she’ll be seaworthy again soon enough.” At his look of consternation, she adds “Yes, I was on Ocracoke.”

He furrows his brows. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“I didn’t want you to know.”

_“Take him, and get the fuck off my beach,” her father snarled. Turning to Margaret, who had witnessed the entire duel while hidden in the crowd, had started pushing her way to the front and was readying herself to throw her body between them before Charles threw down his sword, “Go after him, girl. Keep him alive.” At her dubious expression, he leaned in to add “Promise me you’ll try!” She nodded. By day’s end, she was sailing for Nassau. The Adventure was fast, but she arrived too late to prevent Charles’s capture…_

“When she’s repaired,” he starts, then stops, his face a question.

“When she’s repaired, I intend to leave on her. No idea where the fuck I’ll go.” She looks away from him, studying the currents, weighing something in her mind, then turns to face him head-on. “Come with me?”

Vane’s thin lips part in surprise, and Margaret braces for the impact of his answer. He regains a grip on his composure, and smirks. “How am I expected to deny such a request.”

Margaret cocks one hip out, puts a hand on it, raises an eyebrow. “You’re not.” 

They grin at each other as the first flakes begin to fall. Side by side, they make their way back to the garret. 

Vane stands with one arm braced against the window frame, still in his coat, watching the snow dance and swirl beyond the panes. Maragaret finds herself touched by his expression of wonder. He’s always been gruff, his default expression becoming even stonier in the years since she’d last seen him. Seeing him wide-eyed and earnest soothes something in her. He’s still there, the Charles she was once so close with.

He stretches out an arm to enfold her in the coat as well, pulling her close. She leans into him, if only to savor his warmth. She still fits as though she belongs there, tucked beneath his arm.

“I’ve never seen snow before,” he admits. So many firsts with her. First taste of freedom. First time over the side. First kiss, clumsy and nervous and sweet as could be. And now, snow.

His hand comes to rest at the spot where the musket ball ripped through her side all those years ago. “Margaret, I…” he breaks off.

Her voice is soft. Matter-of fact, but soft. “I’d do it again if I had to. Even now, after everything, I’d do it again.” She extricates herself from under his arm, then pauses to press her lips to his temple. “Good night, Charles.” 

Her door shuts. He takes a deep, unsteady breath and wills his heart to slow its breakneck pace. On the other side of the door, she does the same.


	4. Thieving Magpie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some sailing jargon, and a mention of Nutten Island, which is an island in Upper New York Harbor that is now called Governors’s Island.

“Are you working tonight? Or prizefighting?” Margaret asks Vane by way of greeting as she lays two parcels on the table in front of him, one containing their breakfast and the other containing a fine pair of pistols, used but well-cared for.

“No.”

“I have a meeting with a smuggler boss. He used to be a  _ privateer” _ \-- she sneers as she says the word -- “and I’d appreciate it if you’d join me and watch my back. He intends to fuck me, in all senses of the word.” Margaret’s face is a mask of disgust. “He won’t succeed in any way, but he’s going to make his best effort. The pistols are for you.”

Had this been Nassau, where Charles Vane of the  _ Ranger  _ is famed and feared, he’d have made it known that he would take it personally if anyone was to bother her. If only Margaret had seen him there in his glory, though he realizes the impossibility of the wish: she left Nassau because he forced her to. What would have been, if he’d seen the truth of the situation with Eleanor, if he’d told Margaret how he felt about her, if he hadn’t driven her away? If she’d chosen him over Sully? But here they are, and the past can’t be changed, and Vane has to admit there’s a sort of poetic justice in his current situation, in being wanted and on the run, unable to use his own name and pretending to be Margaret’s hired muscle.

At the rough tavern beside the shipyard, Vane walks directly behind Margaret and stares down anyone who dares comment on her presence, letting the grip of one of the pistols barely peek out from beneath his coat. He takes an immediate dislike to Margaret’s contact, a Mr. Ballard, a ridiculous puffed-up peacock of a man with soft hands and a haughty air. Though she takes a seat across from Ballard, Vane opts to remain standing, so that he’s always in Ballard’s line of sight.

Even though she’s in a dress with her hair pinned up, what Vane has come to think of as her proper lady disguise, Margaret manages to look piratical with her deadpan expression and alert eyes and the lamplight glinting off the silver rings in her ears and brass buttons of her sea coat.

Ballard’s bloodshot eyes flicker from Maragaret to Vane and back. “I see the  _ Adventure _ is registered to a M. Sullivan.”

Margaret’s face is mildly amused. “Correct. I’m Margaret Sullivan.”

“How did a woman --”

She cuts Ballard off. “With difficulty.”

“And why would you be seeking two long nines, Miss Sullivan?”

“Mrs. Not Miss.”

“Very well, then, why would you be seeking two long nines, Mrs. Sullivan?”

Margaret spreads her hands in a broad gesture. “It’s a dangerous life at sea, Mr. Ballard, full of smugglers and pirates and all manner of cutthroats. The  _ Adventure _ needs to be able to defend herself.” Vane quickly hides his smirk by lighting a cigar using the candle on the table..

“Surely, Mrs. Sullivan, you know such cannons command a premium.”

Margaret frowns slightly at the rather inflated price Ballard names. She begins to rise from her chair. “I regret that we’ve wasted one another’s time, Mr. Ballard.”

“Just so you’re aware, I used to sail with William Kidd. You should always know who you’re doing business with, Mrs. Sullivan.” Smug bastard. Vane wants to punch the self-satisfied leer off his pompous face.

Margaret regards Ballard dispassionately. “In that case, I propose we race for this deal. Skiffs. Shipyard to Red Hook and back, through Buttermilk Channel both ways.”

“Mrs. Sullivan, I realize you’re fairly new to the area, so I must warn you that the currents in Buttermilk Channel are --”

“An opportunity to demonstrate skill,” she finishes for him, voice calm.

Vane turns his head so Ballard won’t see him barely suppress a seawolf’s smile. Margaret used to make extra spending money by racing skiffs in Nassau Harbour against newly-arrived sailors. Getting beaten by Margaret Teach was something of a rite of passage for would-be pirates. 

“You’re challenging me to race your, ah,” Ballard’s eyes slide over to Vane, who blows a perfect smoke ring and otherwise keeps his face stoic, “associate?”

“No.” Margaret leans in slightly. “I’m challenging you to race me.”

“And what are your terms?” 

“If you win, I’ll pay your asking price plus an additional ten guineas. If I win, you give me the two guns. For free.”

Vane sees the man’s greed and pride plain on his face; he’ll take pleasure in watching Ballard lose. They troop down the pier to a pair of skiffs. Margaret and Ballard each row to the middle of the river and raise their sails. One of Ballard’s men fires a powder charge from a pistol to mark the start, and they’re off. Vane can imagine the keen, hungry look on Margaret’s face, one he’s seen so many times when in pursuit of a prize. Crouched low with one hand on the lines and the other on the tiller, she heels the little skiff as hard as she can without capsizing it to pick up speed, maneuvering so that she’s on a beam reach with the sail halfway out. Ballard is far more cautious; he leans his skiff far less, and more than once he eases the sheets for a smoother ride.

Vane leans on the railing of the pier, watching and smoking as Margaret rounds the northern tip of Nutten Island into Buttermilk Channel and her sail goes out of sight. The winter constellations wheel overhead in a suddenly clear sky; the wind is shifting. Between the changeable gusts, the currents in this tidal strait, and the cold, he almost pities Ballard. He doesn’t trust the bastard not to try to pull some dirty trick out on the water, and he wishes he had a spyglass. It’s not long before Margaret is back in sight on the return, beating to windward in a series of quick tacks and trailed at some distance by Ballard whose tacks are not nearly so precise and whose sail he allows to luff too soon. Margaret has docked and is back on the pier by the time Ballard starts rowing back in. She heads directly to Vane, her eyes shining and the grimness temporarily gone from her face, and the knot in his chest eases, the weight in the pit of his stomach lessens. He takes his position at her back as Ballard walks up, winded from his exertions.

“Where did you learn to sail like that?”

“My father taught me.” Margaret’s gaze is direct, and Vane thinks the man finally shows enough sense to look abashed. “I trust that you’ll uphold your end of our bargain post-haste.”

“Just so you’re aware,” Vane growls over her shoulder, “her maiden name was Teach.” He watches recognition of the name -- and fear of it -- dawn in the man’s eyes. Good. “You should always know who you’re doing business with, Mr. Ballard.”

He wonders briefly if Margaret will be angry at him for intervening, but no. She looks back at him and grins triumphantly. Ballard all but stammers out orders to his men to move the guns to the  _ Adventure  _ immediately, then takes his leave. 

Margaret and Vane stand side by side at the dry dock, watching Ballard’s men hoist the two cannons aboard.

“Bow chaser and stern chaser?” Vane asks. That’s what he would do with the new guns. For pirates and smugglers, it’s crucial to be able to slow down an enemy ship when the  _ Adventure _ 's small broadside can’t be brought to bear.

Margaret nods. “Just so.” After the race, she is almost lighthearted for the first time since they’ve been reunited, a spring back in her step and the strain around her eyes and mouth relaxed. “The old girl might not be in dry dock now if she’d had them when I was fetching you.”

“Or if you hadn’t fetched me.” He intends to sound jocular, but it comes out defensive.

She fixes him with a look that he can’t read. “Martyrs don’t have to answer for their deeds.” There is no venom in her voice. “And they are absolutely no fucking assistance at sailing.”

“We worked well together,” he offers, trying to ignore the sting of her words.

“We still do.” Is that a hint of wistfulness he detects? “Thank you for accompanying me tonight.”

“Always, Magpie.”

_ Margaret was surrounded by pirates from another crew, who were accusing her of stealing from them and shouting to “hold the bloody little bitch down.” She was fighting hard. Her shirt was torn, her cheek was gashed, and there was a wild terror in her eyes that he’d never seen there before, that he never wanted to see there again. She’d shot two of them and stabbed a third by the time Vane and Sully ran to her aid. Together, they dispatched three more. The remaining two, now that they were outnumbered, fled. He and Sully exchanged a dark look: we will make them pay for this. They walked her back to the Revenge camp, one on either side of her, then went on the hunt. They dragged the two who’d escaped back, and dropped their bloodied, barely-conscious bodies in the sand by the bonfire. Margaret hadn’t been nearly as grateful as they thought she’d have been. No, she was resentful about it. When asked what she wanted done with those last two attackers, she simply pulled a knife from her belt, slit their throats, then stalked off. Vane found her sitting a ways down the beach, elbows on her knees, blood-splattered, staring out to sea.  _

_ He sat beside her. “It bothers you that it bothers you. Them coming after you as they did. Needing help.” _

_ She looked startled that he understood. “Yes.” She bit her lower lip, thinking, and finally said “Thank you for helping me tonight.” _

_ “Always, Magpie.” _

_ And then he was drawing her closer and her hands were tangling in his hair and his lips were on hers and he wasn’t sure whether it was her pulse he felt throbbing or his own. Strange that she should have begun to tremble then, once the danger had passed and she was safe in his arms. _

_ Later, Sully told Vane that those shits weren’t entirely wrong about her, and Vane was going to fight him for insulting her, until Sully explained that their thieving Magpie had stolen them both and didn’t even seem to realize what she’d done. _

Did she edge nearer? She edged nearer. He realizes that they’ve been looking into each other’s eyes without speaking for a long moment, and he’s about gathered the nerve to put his arms ‘round her when she shakes her head as if clearing it of whatever thoughts she’s having. She waves a hand at the  _ Adventure _ . 

“Our names will be on the manifest as Margaret and Charles Sullivan to get out of port.” At Vane’s raised brow she adds “As you pointed out, you can’t very well use your own name. I’m sure Sully would have found this hilarious.”

“Did you call him Sully while you were married to him?”

Margaret snorts.“Of course I did. He hated being called Michael.”

“Not as much as he hated being called Mick.”

The corners of Margaret’s lips turn up slightly as she reminisces. “That’s what I’d call him when I wanted to annoy him.” The way her face softens when she thinks of Sully, Vane thinks he’d been right to stand aside; no reason at all to think of the many times she gave him a similarly gentle smile.

“The only time I called him Mick, he called me Charlie-Boy and we ended up brawling. I don’t even remember who threw the first punch. You dumped a bucket of water on us and told us to stop being fucking idiots. You looked about to spit nails.”

Margaret tilts her head up and shrugs. “Fucking idiots or not, I didn’t want the two people I loved most to fight each other.”

The two people she loved most. Yes, there’s that gentle smile again. 

They begin the walk back to Thieves’ Alley just as a snow squall blows in off the harbor.

“It’s pretty,” she sighs, “even if it delays us being able to get the hell out of here.” Repairs to the  _ Adventure _ had come to a halt on account of the weather. She glances sidelong at him. “It’s crossed my mind that you might try to take my ship and leave without me.”

Vane winces. He can’t blame her for being gun-shy, but he feels gut-punched nonetheless. “I wouldn’t do that, Magpie. Not to you.” He would not willingly lose her a second time. Surely she knows that.

“I want to believe you.” Her voice is soft and a little sad, her eyes large and serious.

He steps in front of her, facing her, hands on her shoulders, and forces his own voice to be steady. “Betraying you was the worst mistake of my life. I give you my word that the only way I’ll fuck off without you is if you tell me to.”

She responds by resting a hand on his chest, close to his fast-beating heart. “I’m trying to believe you, Charles,” she says heavily into the small space between them. “I don’t know if I can, but I’m trying.”

“That’s more than fair.”  _ Magpie, sweetheart, it all went so wrong _ , he wants to tell her.  _ I want to mend this broken thing but I don’t know how. _ But the words are blockaded by the lump in his throat.

She turns her head slightly, and he follows her gaze. The Puritans on the third floor are watching out the window, pinch-faced and disapproving. Margaret gives them a jaunty wave, bringing forth a chuckle from Vane. Funny how she still has that ability, even when his heart feels like grapeshot and his stomach like ballast.

“I’m sure we’ll be waylaid with a speech about hellfire the next time either of us takes the stairs, but at least neither of us are going through life with mouths pursed like a cat’s arsehole,” he tells her. “Rooftop?”

They pick their way across the slippery roofs, past chimneys and over gables to their garrett, Margaret with her skirts hiked up, blithely ignoring the hand that Vane holds out to assist her. He opens the shutters and swings his way inside; she follows, this time taking Vane’s offered hand. She holds it a moment longer, perhaps, than necessary.

“The only invention worse than a dress,” she informs him as she yanks out the pins holding up her hair, “are stays. I don’t know how civilized women tolerate these things every day.” 

He bites back the urge to offer to help her out of it and do some uncivilized things with her. Instead, he sets about building up the fire while she goes to change into trousers. He dares not even cast a glance at the shut door to her room; bad enough that she’d given him a wry half-grin at his widening eyes when she hiked up her skirts to scale a drainpipe.

_ He shouldn’t have been watching her. The gap between the boards in the bulkhead wall of her small cabin, where she moved when Teach decided she had become too much of a temptation to the men, was just wide enough for him to see through, and he told himself he was keeping watch so that none of the crew would see what he was seeing. She was bathing herself as best as she could on the ship, with a cloth and a basin of seawater, and he couldn’t pry his eyes away as she stretched a wiry arm overhead, the muscles of her back stretching and flexing, to wash her underarm. Life at sea is one of physical labor, and her body was sleekly muscled, feminine as a lioness. He longed to run his hands over the hard sinews and soft curves of her, the swell of her hips and the hollow of her waist. She turned to wash under her other arm, and the lantern light caught her sweet, round breasts. It was slightly chilly, and her nipples, dear god, her nipples, were hard. By this time, he’d been to the brothel numerous times with the men, who decided he was due. Yet somehow the effect she had on him was entirely different than anything he ever experienced there. She wasn’t performing; she wasn’t seducing. He knew he shouldn’t have been watching her, but he wanted to delight her. He wanted to take those delicious peaks in his palms and his mouth then move lower, run his fingers and tongue across the bullet scars on her ribcage from where she saved his life, then lower still, through that cloud of curls at her cleft. He found himself wondering how she would taste, what noises she would make, what kind of touch would make her melt. He knew she was still a maiden, that nobody had ever touched her there... He inhaled sharply at the thought and she must have heard him because she tensed and grabbed a knife as she checked that the door was bolted. The image of her naked body coiling in preparation to fight seared itself into his memory, replayed countless times in the intervening years. He willed himself to be silent and after a moment she seemed to decide it was a false alarm. She pulled on a clean shirt and breeches then sat down on one hip, legs curled to the side, and unplaited her hair to comb it. He thought she looked like a mermaid luring sailors to their doom, and he’d have gladly drowned if she beckoned him. The next day while she was working abovedecks, he caulked the gap in the boards. _


End file.
